Another day. She watched herself in
the small bathroom mirror. Hair scattered, mouth dry, small purple pouches
under eyes. Ugly. This was her morning face she thought. She thought of all
those who, all those years, had lied to her saying she was beautiful, lies,
which were true in what now seems like her past life. Lack of sleep and more of
crying had made her the person standing on the other side of mirror.
Sakshi was getting old. But then everyone
gets old. Some with time. Some with burden of expectations. Some with lack of
money and some like her gets old with events, uncontrollable, life changing continuous
devastating events. “Another day” she took handful of water and splashed on her
face.
She opened the front door. A cool
breeze of November brushed her face. Her night gown flickered like a sail in
wild ocean winds. She took packet of milk and came back to the kitchen.
“When will I get the tea?” she
keeps hearing it, again and again. It has been years but she still misses him,
she misses preparing tea for her husband, for father of his son. He was gone,
long back. She always thought how different her life would have been if he was
here waiting for tea. She woke up to reality with boiling tea spilled all over
the gas burner.
Sakshi Dayal was head of chemistry
department in Vivekananda College. She had started as assistant professor of
chemistry in the same college and had been teaching since last fourteen years.
At the age of forty five, she was now one of the youngest to head chemistry
department. At a young age of thirty one her husband died of an accident
leaving their three year old son to her, who was now seventeen. She lives with
her son in Santacruz, a Mumbai suburb area. With an average height, slim
physique, bright twinkling eyes perfectly matching her spotless fair rounded
face, she looked like a person with a purpose. She possessed an excellent
expertise in subject of chemistry and a brilliant understanding of human
behavior. Another expertise was her motherhood. She was confidant and equally proud
of the fact that her son never felt absence of his father.
Sakshi took out her red saaree and
kept at the corner of her bed. She unlocked all the drawers of the cupboard.
She checked her dressing table, powder, eyeliner, kaajal, bindi, all were
there. Her face muscles flinched but gave no expression of what she was
thinking. She was ready to leave for the college. She checked the sticky notes
ones again. “Stay home till I am back and DO NOT LEAVE HOUSE” on the front door
knob where only a person going out could see. “Lunch is in fridge” stuck on the
fridge door, in the center, large and clear. She entered his room. He was
sleeping like a baby, knees folded into his stomach and both hands clasped
under his head. She looked at calm face of her son with affection and slowly
closed the door of his room and walked out of the house. Note on the table near
his bed said, “I Love you”.
***
It was all blur. Like a thin sheet
of cloth had covered entire sky. Grey had turned more towards darker shade. It felt
like an hour after sunset or an hour before of sunrise, none could be sure. Place
was familiar. Half constructed building made a perfect silhouette on the
nature’s canvas. And then like a gardener’s water jet it started, sudden burst
of rain made dry soil fly like smoke. Smell of damp leaves filled the air. She
was standing in open, trembling, with both hands trying to cover her naked
body. With her uncontrolled sobbing and pleading of her eyes, she looked
familiar, a face which has always been known. Her body bore scratches all over,
as if dragged on the concrete. Skin stripped off of the muscles of left arm and
left thigh, leaving trail of blood droplets slowly moving towards floor. There
was no one else in the sight but she kept looking as if someone was approaching
her. She moved back, still trying to hide herself, her naked arms holding
across her shoulders. Another step back and it all skipped, already on the
edge, she had kept her step on air, it was a second of free fall, no more
worried of her body her hands stretched in the wind like feathers of a new born
seagull. She was flying, flying like an angle. She flew upward, towards heaven,
her body still falling.
With a huge thud, like something heavy
falling on the heap of sand, Chirag woke up to find sunlight dancing all over
his room. What a dreadful dream he thought. He could still see her familiar
face. But that was not real. Reality was the note on a bright yellow square paper
saying “I Love you”. He smiled and threw the blanket aside. “I am late” he
looked at the clock and dragged his smooth hair from his forehead towards back
of his ears, a habit he had picked from his mother. It was nothing new for
him to be late. He never liked going to college. He never understood why girls
kept looking at him and laughing. Why boys teased him. He was good in studies.
He played table tennis like other students. He was going to be part of collage
drama team. He did everything what a boy of his age should do. He used to go to
the parties when he first joined college. But now no one invites him and he
never understood the reason. “He was not gay” he had explained to so many of
his friends. Not one believed. Now he hardly had any friends. College was
slowly becoming a hard place to be. He was happy that he was late. He is going
to skip college today and will directly go to the rehearsals in the evening.
“Like father like son” He shouted
holding the script in one hand a cup of tea in another, as if he was standing
in a balcony and looking down at Duryodhana the king of Indraprastha, who had slipped
and fell on the palace floor. Then he laughed. “You truly are son of Blind
King” uttered and turned at his place. He put the cup on the table and started
pacing the room, reading from the paper, “You know why I agreed to marry all
five? Not one alone can bring down complete Kuru clan. I will need all five to
fulfill my purpose” He looked across his room, could see Draupadi’s father
Drupad standing in the corner, worried.
‘I am born from fire and the same
fire is going to burn you all down to ashes’ He read as intensely as Draupadi
would have said in front of whole sabha looking each one of them in eye,
difference was that he was sitting on the table holding his head by both of his
hands.
‘My Love, why nakedness is cursed
and despised? Don't we love our body?’ he read lying on bed, hands dangling
from the edge holding script. He could see lord Krishna smiling.
Chirag always wanted to be part of college
drama group and got his chance now. It doesn’t matter if no girl or boy wants
to play this role. They laughed when he volunteered. “Yes bro, you need five of
them” someone had shouted. He ignored them all. This was his chance and there
was no way he was going to screw this up and for that he needs to start
practicing right away.
***
By afternoon Chirag had already
memorized all his dialogs. For a final practice before leaving for rehearsals
he wanted to do a dress rehearsal at home.
His mother walked into the room
just as he was about to apply her new lipstick. She was startled. He was
startled. "What are you doing with my lipstick? It's new...I haven't used
it so far. Couldn't you have waited?" He smiled and handed it back to her.
"I forgot to tell you...I am playing Draupadi in our college production...
rehearsals start this evening."
She couldn’t say anything apart
from a toneless and emotionless “Ok”. It doesn’t matter now. She was not going
to use the lipstick anyway. She left him at her dressing table and came out of
the room. She glanced at the calendar. It said November 12. She took the marker
from side table and made another cross.
She was watching tv when the door
of her room opened. He stood there. Smiling. “How do I look?” he asked his
right hand on his left shoulder and left hand on his waist, imitating some
fairy tale daughter of a king. She looked at him. Mesmerized. This must be how
her daughter might have looked if she had one. She couldn’t take her eyes off
her son. “Mom, how do I look?” he asked again. He was wearing the same red saaree
she kept on her bed. Controlling her heart which was now filling up with
emotions, she had only one word for him, “beautiful”.
He went on turning left and right
as if advertizing the saaree he was wearing. “I woke up late and didn’t feel
like going to college” he said sitting beside her mother. Sakshi noticed that
the note on the door knob was untouched.
“I will change back to my cloths
now. Vikas must be coming to pick me up”
“Oh yes, about that. They have
cancelled the rehearsals for today and will start from tomorrow. Vikas told me
to let you know”
“Oh” He stood up and walked back to
his room.
***
Dinner table was not very large but
it had plenty of space left once both mother and son sat there eating. “Why do you
walk like a girl?” she asked him without looking up from her plate. He laughed,
“What? No I don’t walk like a girl” said, chewing a piece of chapatti.
“You did when you were dressed up
in Saareee.” She looked at him now, pleading for an answer.
“Oh that! I was just copying you”
he said as naturally as breathing. She almost chocked. Eyes filled with tears,
she was looking back to her food, not showing her emotions. “It’s me” she
thought. She had never let any man near him. It was always her mother, a woman
who molded him. She passed two pills to him and without any question he took
it. “Mom?” He spoke after gulping the pills with water. She looked up. “Did I
have any sister?” “No” she said, “why do you ask?” he waited for few more
moments. “I see her in my dreams”
***
Shakshi checked the lock of the
door, satisfied, she switched off the lights. She had already switched off the
gas knob in the kitchen. There was no light coming from his room. She mentally
made a note of pills she gave to him. One of those was a sleeping pill to make
him sleep longer. She came to her room, locked the door and cried, cried till
her heart felt lighter. She walked to the bed and took out an envelope from
under the bed. They were Chirag’s medical reports. She found herself back in
the hospital and could hear the doctor “Complex system in brain are badly
injured. He is suffering from anterior grade amnesia. Fall has damaged
significance portion of his frontal and temporal lobes including his left
hippocampus.” She had not understood any of it then. But now she does. A drop
of tear fell on the paper and a paper fell on the ground from the bundle. “First
Information Report”. She picked it up and read the last paragraph…
“Apparently few students stayed
late for a drama rehearsals in which he was playing Draupadi. Later the boy was
found near the under construction site of the new proposed medical college,
which was abandoned due to lack of legal permissions for construction on forest
land. He was found in an unconscious state on a heap of sand under a half
constructed building…”
“It’s not your sister my son. It’s
Draupadi. It’s you in the dream”
She stuffed the paper back into the
envelope and lay straight. Watching white ceiling of her room. How she had
pleaded to the doctor to tell her if her son was raped. How she had cried to
them to see the bleeding between his thighs. How she was told not to accuse a
reputed college. How she was told medical report says nothing of such event. “It
was a case of rave party gone wrong, which unfortunately turned into a
disaster, the boy slipped from the terrace. Yes, compensation would be provided
to the family. Of course other boys are suspended. We do not allow such grave indiscipline
in our college” Dean and teachers had given statements more or less on the same
lines. No one mentioned her son was found naked. No one mumbled that he was
bleeding between his thighs. No one empathized that his head injury was so
grave the he would never…
She left the sentence incomplete.
She could not even tell that to herself. College had paid for the surgeries he
went through. A check of Two hundred thousand rupees was sent to her after he
was discharged from hospital and it was all done. She closed her eyes. A drop
of tear traced from corner of her eye to the petal of her ear. Today she wanted
to sleep with lights on, if she can sleep at all.
***
Another Day. She splashed hand full
of water on her face, looking straight in mirror, into her own eyes. “I am
getting old” she thought. Tea was prepared. She kept her red saaree at the
corner of her bed. Glanced at the makeup kit on the dressing table. Hid her new
lipstick. Stuck all the notes like she did a day before and the day before
that, for almost a month now and left for the college.
He was pacing the room reading the
script, dressed in the red saareee when his mother walked into the room. She
was startled. He was startled. "What are you doing wearing a saaree?” He
smiled "I forgot to tell you. I am playing Draupadi in our college
production. Rehearsals start this evening."
She didn’t say anything but cursed
her gut for being shocked even after knowing that it was not his fault, that his
memory was stuck to the day of incident, that he would never be able to make
new memories, that every day, his whole life, he would want to be Draupadi.
“But then why they have invented the words like ‘hope’ and ‘miracle’?” she
thought.
Hoping for a miracle she left him
at her dressing table and came out of the room. She glanced at the calendar, it
said November 13. She took the marker from side table and made another cross. She
counted number of crosses, Twenty eight.
***
